in the end was found dead (as his fellow-countrymen 
would expect) in a lonely shack. The evidence indicated 
that he had recently eaten a mess of stewed mushrooms 
prepared by himself. The coroner after chemical analysis 
of the uneaten remains of the stew put the death down 
to accidental muscarine poisoning. ‘The victim’s son, 
Paul, was not satisfied, because he was certain his father, 
a careful man and excellent amateur mycologist, could 
never have confused Amanita muscaria with an edible 
species, and in the end he ran down the real culprit, a 
lover of Paul’s stepmother, a villain named Robert 
Lathom, who in due course was proved to have intro- 
duced synthetic muscarine into the stock that had served 
for the mushroom stew. He was tried, convicted, and 
hanged. The story is well told, with delightful touches 
revealing the mycophobic habits of mind of the run of 
Englishmen. But it suffers from one defect: muscarine 
is destroyed by cooking and could not have caused the 
victim’s death. Furthermore, the toxicity of fresh mus- 
carine is exaggerated: the chances were excellent that 
Harrison would survive an uncooked dose. Lathom 
should have used pieces of 4. phalloides, not muscarine, 
and for informed readers, his execution was a painful 
miscarriage of justice, a tragic sequel to an incompetent 
performance by Defense Counsel. 
Miss Sayers and Mr. Eustace used, or misused, a 
genuine mushroom. More often English authors create 
fictional species, tailored to fit their plots. Ernest Bramah 
in The Eyes of Max Carrados tells a story entitled “The 
Mystery of the Poisoned Dish of Mushrooms’. It hinges 
on the peculiar properties of a non-existent fungus on 
which he bestows a name unknown to mycology, dA man- 
ita bhuroides. (This name sounds like a misspelled de- 
rivative of Burrhus, a personage in attendance at the 
imperial court of Claudius and Nero.) It is so deadly 
[ 105 | 
